david lebovitz

Instead of making a more traditional gingerbread, sugar or butter cookie to leave for Santa Claus, this year, I made alfajores. With an outside of delicate melt-in-your mouth vanilla cookie and an inside of creamy dulce de leche, these Argentine sandwich cookies are wonderfully delicious. The cookies have to be completely cooled before spreading on the dulce de leche, so get started on them right away. In Argentina, they are three to four inches in diameter, but I prefer smaller cookies and made mine with a two-and-a-half inch biscuit cutter; feel free to adjust the size to suit your preferences. These buttery cookies pair perfectly with coffee, sparkling wine, or in the case of Old Saint Nick, a glass of milk! Read more for the recipe.

Wondering what to make with a bounty of fresh eggplant? Take a tip from OnSugar blog Fresh Tart and put together a creamy and delicious eggplant caviar dip.

My family is more than a little obsessed with the eggplant spread — or melitzanosalata — at It's Greek to Me.  The creamy eggplant is perfectly balanced with lemon, garlic, fresh herbs, and salt.  Nathan and I could sit down with just that, and a mountain of pillowy, hot-off-the-griddle pita bread, and stuff ourselves like fat little dolmades.

Yeah.

Needless to say, when I saw a pile of gorgeous eggplants at the farmers market, I greedily snagged several, with eggplant spread fully on my mind.  I used this David Lebovitz eggplant caviar recipe, because 1) David Lebovitz recipes are always fantastic, and 2) I loved the idea of the seared, blackened eggplant skins imparting a subtle smokiness to the spread.

Always go for the smoke, right?  Perhaps a rule to live by.

To see the recipe she uses for this scrumptious eggplant dish, read more.

To entice consumers this travel season, Virgin America is coming out with a new Summer menu — and it's enlisted the help of none other than the famous pastry chef turned food blogger David Lebovitz.

The food overhaul, which starts today, includes options such as Andalusian gazpacho and eggplant moussaka for first-class diners — plus Lebovitz's butterscotch pudding with vanilla bourbon mascarpone for dessert.

For those who aren't lucky enough to sit in the first few rows, the main cabin is also offering up new bites along the lines of a grilled veggie goat cheese sandwich and pastrami with Swiss on Russian rye. And if the green fairy's not their poison of preference, flyers can indulge in illy cappuccino cocktails and reposado-spiked Honest Tea cocktails.

I'm curious about Virgin's newest noshes, but mostly intrigued by the fact that the airline carrier actually turned to the food blogosphere for some culinary advice. I can't help but wonder if we'll be seeing more of that in the future. It'd be a good thing! Do you agree? And if you're flying Virgin this Summer, will you check out the new food?

Source: Flickr User disrupsean

• Find out how the Hello Kitty wine actually tastes. — Serious Eats
• The top four worst coffeehouse faux pas. — Chow
• The latest food blogger to get a book deal? Deb Perelman of Smitten Kitchen. — Eat Me Daily
• Must read: David Lebovitz's new cookbook, Ready For Dessert. — The Epi-Log
• Are posted calorie counts really accurate? — Feast
• Alice Waters shares her mission with Martha.— Grub Street SF
• Jose Andrés is expanding his restaurant empire to Las Vegas. — Eater
• Even Mario Batali has decided to go meatless on Mondays.— Huffington Post Food

This morning, the International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP) announced the finalists for its 2010 cookbook awards. Among the finalists? Notable restaurant chefs Thomas Keller, John Besh, Marcus Samuelsson, and Michael Psilakis, as well as former Gourmet editor Ruth Reichl.

The IACP awards winners in the following categories: American; Baking: Savory or Sweet; Chefs & Restaurants; Children, Youth, and Family; Compilations; Culinary History; First Book; Food Photography and Styling; Food Reference; General; Health and Special Diet; International; Library Food Writing; Professional Kitchens; Single Subject; and Wine, Beer & Spirits. To find out which notable cookbooks have — and haven't — been included, read more.

A couple of weeks ago I was asked to make a birthday cake for a friend. His favorite flavors are ginger, pumpkin, and chocolate — in that order, so I wanted to make some sort of layer cake that incorporated these elements.

After an extensive Internet search, I couldn't find a recipe. There are tons of ginger chocolate desserts and lots of pumpkin chocolate confections, but nothing that combines them all. Thus, I took matters into my own hands and created this gingerbread layer cake with pumpkin-spiced whipped cream and chocolate ganache drizzle. It's three different recipes that together, make one gorgeous and delicious cake.

The layers are moist, the filling pillowy, and the topping rich. It's a stunning and impressive cake full of holiday flavors, that I highly recommend. Everyone at the party loved it and your guests will too, so get the recipe.

On the hot days of Summer, there is nothing like a scoop of ice cream to cool down. While I've enjoyed my fair share of store-bought ice cream, it was finally time to start making my own, so I recently purchased the ice cream attachment for my Kitchenaid. I was nervous about making ice cream (the custard can quickly curdle) and unfortunately, my nerves got the best of me: when I turned up the heat too high my first batch curdled at the very end of cooking!

While I was disappointed with my first go, I had to give it another shot and I am glad I did. With a little more patience, I kept the heat lower and the second custard batch was a complete success. Intrigued by David Lebovitz's interesting ice cream combinations in Fine Cooking, I decided to make his unique roasted pine nut and fruity olive oil ice cream. The flavor definitely caught my guests off guard, but once they took a bite, they loved it! The pairing of olive oil and pine nuts is actually reminiscent of the more traditional butter pecan. If you are screaming for ice cream this Summer, keep reading.